Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (26 page)

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Authors: Kenneth Roberts,Jack Bales,Richard Warner

Tags: #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc., #Nottingham (Galley) - Fiction, #Transportation, #Historical, #Boon Island (Me.) - Fiction, #Boon Island, #18th Century, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc - Fiction, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc, #Shipwrecks, #Fiction, #Literary, #Sea Stories, #Historical Fiction, #Shipwrecks - Maine - Boon Island - History - 18th Century - Fiction, #test, #Boon Island (Me.), #General, #Maine, #History

BOOK: Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
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Page 147
I knew how my father felt. I was always low in my mind when I left him to go up to Oxford; but now I was even more unhappy, because he showed so clearly that he
was
concerned, and deeply. For the life of me I couldn't say a word: could only hope that someday I could show my feelings in a proper manner.
As we went down the steps and turned toward the oily, misty river, my father called after us, "Watch over him, Swede, as though he were your own boy." I always remembered his words, and Swede never forgot them either.
 
Page 148
Chapter 5
An argument was in progress between Langman and Captain Dean, when we came over the
Nottingham's
bulwarks that morning of July 30th. Langman was protesting because Captain Dean had ordered him to remove his dunnage from the after cabin so that there might be room for other passengersthe others being his younger brother Henry, Neal Butler, Swede and me.
Probably for those of us who don't have villainy in our heartsand villainy, of course, includes jealousy, which is responsible for most of the ills that beset this worldstupidity is our besetting sin. I have never been jealous of any man, but I have been stupid far too often. I was stupid not to see why Langman was so determined to retain a foothold in the after cabin.
"You made an agreement with me," he told Captain Dean. "I was to have a cabin, same as yours. I was captain of my own ship under Woodes Rogers, and captain of this vessel, too, before I sold her to your brother, and you've got no right"
"Now just a minute," Captain Dean said. "My brother
 
Page 149
Jasper made a gentleman's agreement with you. He bought your ship and paid three hundred pounds for it, and no questions asked. He made just one concession to you, and that was that you were to sail on her as first mate under me as captain, and could ship Mellen and White along with you."
"All those other things are in the contract," Langman said. "He promised me"
"Come now, Langman," Captain Dean said moderately, "my brother has no secrets from me. He told me exactly the arrangements he made with you, and I've followed them precisely. You're first mate of this ship, and you'll continue to be so, no matter how many lies you tell me. Nicholas Mellen and George White were signed on as sailors on this ship at your insistence. First you said I'd promised you a berth in the after cabin. I didn't. Then you said my brother guaranteed you the same. He didn't, any more than he guaranteed Mellen and White any specific quarters. Through no fault of my own, there's no room for you in the after cabin, so you're to get forward and bunk with the men. If you find this too uncomfortable or too inconvenient, you can feel free to leave the ship at any. moment."
"Now you're not only breaking your brother's solemn covenant, but you're trying to deprive me of a chance to make a living," Langman said.
"Stow it," Captain Dean said. "Stow all that guff about solemn covenants. I'm breaking nothing and I'm depriving you of nothing. I'd be within my rights if I discharged you for insubordination; but even if I did, you'd get along anywhere on the Thames Estuary as long as you could scrape up little boys to catch whitebait for you. Go forward,
 
Page 150
Mr. Langman, and light a dozen sulfur candles in the foc's'la matter you should have attended to long ago, by the way. The place has enough bugs to stock half a dozen of those Woodes Rogers ships you're always talking about."
Langman stared at Captain Dean with that characteristic little one-sided smile of hisone that I soon came to recognize as a sneer: not a smile at all. "First thing I know," Langman said, "these passengers of yours will rank me. And if they do, I won't be first mate any more. Then you'll have broken your brother's solemn covenant again."
"Don't worry, Mr. Langman," Captain Dean said. "You're still first mate, but you'll be subordinate to these two gentlemen. Mr. Whitworth is supercargo and Swede here is first lieutenant, having served as captain of the foretop on one of Her Majesty's ships. As soon as I've got Mr. Whitworth settled in the cabin, I'll thank you to give him whatever help he needs to get our cordage aboard and stowed away. We've got to be out of this river in two days."
"She's not fit to sail," Langman said, "and you know it."
"I know nothing of the sort," Captain Dean said. "She's fit to sail as far as Ireland; and whatever needs doing, we'll have done when we get there."
"Four of our guns are worthless," Langman said. "You can't protect yourself if you get chased by a privateer."
Captain Dean looked surprised. "That's news to me," he said. "You fired all ten of 'em?"
"Well, not exactly," Langman said, "but I can tell."
"If they're guns and hold together," Swede said, "you only need to scale 'em and prick out their touch-holes. I'll make 'em worth something to you."
 
Page 151
"We've got no water," Langman protested.
"We've got enough water to take us to Donegal," Captain Dean said, "and the best mineral spring in Great Britain is at Killybegs. Do as I tell you and do it quick."
Captain Dean pushed us into the after cabin. "Thank God you're aboard," he said. "That damned Langman! I'll bet your father was right when he suspected Langman of being a buccaneer! Remember how he said 'most of these privateers are buccaneers, no matter what the law says'? That would account for the way Langman fights me at every turn. That's a buccaneer to the life. A privateersman has order aboard his ship, but buccaneers live without government, spend all the money they capture, make no distinction between captain and crew, and are forever changing officers and fighting among themselves like tomcats."
He introduced us to his brother Henry, contenting himself with saying that Henry was the gambler of the family, and traveling for his health: wishful, too, of studying the methods of American merchants. Henry was a smaller silent copy of the captain, done in weaker colors, and he was an epileptic.
"Where's my boy?" Swede asked.
"I've got him copying something," Captain Dean said. "I'll keep him at it until we're safe away. He laid awake all last night, gritting his teeth. I probably gritted mine, too, because I had a lot of thinking to dosome about Neal and Miles, but more about this Langman."
We stowed our dunnage as instructed. Captain Dean put me with Henry Dean in one of the three small rooms, Neal Butler in a second room with Swede. The captain bunked by himself in the third and smallest room. There
 
Page 152
was a fourth room answering as a head for those occupying the great cabinthough the term "great" could only be applied to it out of courtesy. Neal was hard at work copying
The Seaman's Secrets
onto sheets of paper stitched together, but Captain Dean took me by the arm and urged me toward the deck when I stopped to look at Neal's writing.
"Don't waste a minute," the captain said. "This Langman is a troublemaker. He hates your father for giving him a dressing down, and somehowprobably by keeping his ears open at the Riverside Tavernhe found out that I insured this vessel and our cargo with your father. He's been gabbing about it all over the ship. Insured for vast sums, he's telling the men. Vast sums, for God's sake! You probably know how much insurance I took outtwo hundred and fifty pounds!"
He halted me at the top of the companion ladder. "That's why I'm so anxious to stow that cordage, and get to sea before Langman has a chance to go ashore and talk. If he ever hears about that dead man, he'll put two and two together, and he'd be bound to figure ten as the answer."
For a time I feared that Langman might inflict some of his contrariness on Neal, but apparently he had been made wary by my father's protest against his employment of boys at small wages. He walked widely around Neal, but I often caught him looking at the boy out of the corners of his eyes, as one watches a thunderhead that may become dangerous.
Of course I couldn't be sure, but I felt that Langman didn't know that Neal had ever been in any way connected with Penkethman's players. Even so, I was apprehensive, and Captain Dean was equally fearful; so the two of us
 
Page 153
worked the men hard at loading the cordage, and I had my first look at the company with whom I was to spend the most important days of my life.
Sailors to me are a mystery, always, and I shall forever be at a loss as to why men of their own free will take to the sea. To my way of thinking a ship is no better than a prison, and those who sail upon her, barring the captain, do so out of desperation or out of their inability to make a living on the land.
Our ship's cook, for example, Cooky Sipper, could never have been a cook anywhere except on a merchant vessel, where there's little to eat save salt pork, salt beef and ship's biscuit. As a seaman and a stower of cordage he was useless; and being a fat man, he succeeded at only two things: perspiring easily and getting in everyone's way. He was of so little use to us that I asked Langman to send him back to his galley.
The
Nottingham
accidentallyand because of Langman's insistence when he sold the
Nottingham
to the Deanscarried two bos'ns, George White and Nicholas Mellen, both former shipmates of Langman. A bos'n, because he has charge of all sails, rigging, canvas, colors, anchors, cables and cordage, must of necessity be an able seaman, and White and Mellen certainly were able, even though they were thick as thieves with Langman. White had a depression at the end of his nose, like the stem-end of a peach, and Mellen was so cross-eyed that I didn't see how he could steer a boat.
The carpenter, Chips Bullock, looked a little like his name, for he would stand with head lowered, staring at a task to be done, then rush at it like a bull, pushing and heaving and grunting.
 
Page 154
The other men in the crewWilliam Saver, Christopher Gray, Charles Graystock and Harry Hallionwere about the same sort of sailors that every resident of Greenwich was accustomed to see in taverns, or wandering aimlessly along the streets: people who seemed to have come from nowhere and to be bound for nowhere.
Saver had enormous ears and never smiled except when he heard of trouble occurring to someone. He wasn't particular. Anyone would do.
Christopher Gray was a gunner who had lost two fingers and had his eyelids blown full of powder grains. I doubted that he could lay a gun effectively, but I never found out, fortunately.
Graystock was a small man with a drooping lower lip. Whatever he was set to do, he always left it half done in order to talk to and interfere with someone who was doing well enough without assistance.
Hallion was a reckless sort, forever getting hurt because he did things in ways they shouldn't be done. He had a positive genius for doing things wrong, poor wretch.
Their faces were wrinkled and drab, as if they'd been salted in a beef barrel, instead of exposed to the sun. Yet all of them worked to the best of their ability, perhaps because that pale gambler Henry Dean worked with them, as did Swede and even the captain, except when the latter was ashore, getting the cordage into barges and making sure that it reached us with a minimum of delay. Only Neal Butler remained in the cabin, copying and copying
The Seaman's Secrets
onto his stitched sheets.
"We'll take no chances," Captain Dean said, "and I won't feel safe if anyoneanyone at allcatches a glimpse of that boy while we're still at this anchorage."
 
Page 155
So every one of the five of us in the
Nottingham's
cabin heaved a sigh of relief when, on the morning of August 2nd, the last bargeload of cordage came aboard. Even before it was lowered into the hold, our anchors were aweigh, and we were headed downstream for the Nore, that sandy islet at the mouth of the Thames where outbound merchantmen assemble to wait for warships assigned to convoy them out of England's privateer-infested narrow waters and in the general direction of their desired havens.
As we came down among the sixty-odd vessels anchored at the Nore, Captain Dean eyed them disparagingly. "Look at their hulls," he told me. "Hardly a galley among 'em: bluff bows, like tubs. If we get many like that in our convoy, we'll have to strike out on our own."
"If you strike out on your own," Langman warned, "this ship'll. have another owner in a week's time."
"Is that a threat, Mr. Langman?" Captain Dean asked mildly.
Langman's face was a dusky red. "No!" he shouted. "But I took this ship myself when I was with Woodes Rogers, and I know how easy she is to take! You let a French privateer lay her aboard and where'll
you
be?"
"I'll be awake, Mr. Langman," Captain Dean said. "I think perhaps her crew was asleep when
you
took her."
Langman went forward, seething.
That passage between Langman and Captain Dean was characteristic of their attitudes. Captain Dean's idol, whom he quoted and to whom he referred more frequently than did Langman to Woodes Rogers, was Sir Isaac Newton. Dean had corresponded with Newton regarding an improved method of finding the longitude of a ship at sea;

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